Trust & safety

OC Cosign is built to be honest about what it is. The four commitments below are architecture, not policy.

OC never touches the money

When you back or zap a project, you pay the founder’s own Lightning address directly. OrangeCheck records the gesture for display and notifications — it never takes custody of a single sat. There is no OC wallet in the middle, no escrow, no balance to withdraw. If cosign.ochk.io vanished tomorrow, the payments you already made are unaffected, because they never went through OC.

A backing amount shown on a project is a pledge until the founder confirms they received it, at which point it becomes settled. Only settled sats move a goal bar or earn recognition — the headline conviction signal is the sats that actually moved between wallets, not a number OC holds.

Back monthly is the same promise extended in time: a standing reminder to send sats yourself each period. OC stores no card and no credential, holds no balance, and never auto-pulls or charges you — you always initiate the payment from your own wallet.

It is not a securities platform

Getting behind a project on OC Cosign is an endorsement and a patron relationship — joining as a co-founder, or backing a builder you believe in. It is not the purchase of a regulated security, equity, or a debt instrument. Founders write their own terms in plain English (an endorsement, a reward, a sweat-equity conversation off-platform); OC takes no equity, holds no funds, and brokers nothing. Nothing here is investment advice.

Your interest stays private until you both opt in

A join or a back is a private request to the founder — it is never shown on the public project page, and your note is never exposed, until the founder accepts and the cosign becomes mutual. Only then does a thread open. A founder cannot force a direct message from a one-way zap.

No KYC, no account, no lock-in

Your OrangeCheck identity is the account — start with email, Google, GitHub, or a Bitcoin wallet. There’s no separate signup, no password, no identity document. Proving control of a Bitcoin address (the verified-Bitcoiner upgrade) is optional and additive — a signal you can add, never a gate to get in.

The trust anchors, named

• The founder’s Lightning address is the only place sats go. It’s shown in plain text on the project; verify it before you pay.
• The founder’s receipt confirmation. Because OC never sees the payment, a backing becomes settled when the founder marks it received — a named attestation, not cryptographic proof. It’s a web-of-trust signal, log-damped and backing-only so it can’t be cheaply gamed; LUD-21 auto-verification is the planned cryptographic hardening that removes the attestation step.
• The OrangeCheck auth host (ochk.io) issues the identity session every .ochk.io site shares.

If a project asks you to send sats anywhere other than the Lightning address shown on its page, treat that as a red flag.